“Cant” (KANT) – from the Latin for singing/chanting – is empty, insincere talk, implying what is not felt.
Example (as used by Benita Eisler in Byron: Child of Passion, Fool of Fame): “[Lord Byron's poem] Don Juan delighted London gossipmongers with plentiful allusions to the scandal surrounding the poet’s divorce from his young wife of one year and his subsequent flight from English ‘hypocrisy and cant.’”
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